Tuesday, May 29, 2012

UWC Nordic photography contest

Congratulations to UWC Mahindra College who had 5 finalists out of the 10 chosen pictures and to Katja who won the April-May section of the contest with her unusual take on the Taj Mahal...

You can see all the uploaded photographs here, and the ten best here. The Norwegian world famous photographer Knut Bry has picked this photograph as
the best for this month. The prize will be despatched to Katja as soon
as possible. You can read Knut Bry's writeup about the submissions below in
case you would like to use this in any way.

It
has been very difficult to select the best photograph, as so very many
good ones have been submitted. We are therefore opening up for each jury
member to select from ALL pictures submitted, rather than for the
specific period. This will also ensure that there will be enough
pictures to select from, if there are not enough entries during the
summer months. However, it is up to YOU to help us keep up
momentum. Please send out reminders any way you can so that we get as
many pictures as possible. Use your website, Facebook, Twitter and
mailing lists if at all possible.

Kari Anne Paust

UWC Norway

Thank you very much for your co-operation. We really appreciate all the help we can get.

This month’s winner is a picture in the Environment category by Katja Flûkinger (UWC Mahindra College 2010) with the simple, but never the less spot on, and humorous title, ‘Love your goats’. The winner was chosen by famous Norwegian photographer Knut Bry.

Here’s what Knut had to say upon choosing the winner:

“A world famous place - taken from an unknown angle. The man with the goat makes the whole picture. It’s a strong contrast between the sublime and the real world. It reminded me that one never sees pictures of Agra, only the Taj Mahal.

Technically, the picture is confidently composed and captures the moment. Perhaps it could do with some more ‘punch’, a little bit more contrast would have been great, but then again, I know India and its ever-flat and misty light. Probably not much any of us can do about that!

It was really hard to choose the one winner for this month though. Both Vincent Wong’s (LPCUWC 2012) picture from the International Understanding category, Katja Flûkinger’s other picture from Action and Karanjit Singh’s (UWC Mahindra College) from Service, almost made it all the way to the top.

Overall there were quite a few promising photographers from across UWC. My advice after looking through the material so far is that you should just concentrate yourself a little bit more as you shoot the picture. If you have the time, and if it’s not a spontaneous shot you should use some more time in framing the picture as you shoot. Some of the pictures, especially some of the landscape and environment images could really have made it all the way to the exhibition if they just spent a little bit more time in either straightening it up afterwards in an editing program or concentrating even a bit more as you shoot it.

Pictures like those from Dhruv Chadh, Maria Wyller (UWC Red Cross Nordic) and Nisal Deelaka Senarathna (UWC Maastricht), are just wonderful landscape pictures, but would have come out so much stronger and tighter if the horizontal lines were dead on.

Cutting down from 17 to 10 pictures was really hard. Some of the pictures by Nisal Deelaka Senarathna (UWC Maastricht), Melissa Leong (UWC Mahindra College) and Nur Raihan Rahma UWC Costa Rica 2010) were really hard to take out, but hopefully some of the other jurors will pick them!

I am really looking forward to see your exhibition out on the Town Hall square in Oslo. Good luck!